


sicken of the calm

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, hera and minkowski observe and judiciously do not comment, isabel lovelace faces her most terrible task yet, isabel lovelace really wants to hit a man, sometime in s4, taking a five minute break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 06:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13242918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: No one’s dead (yet), nothing’s on fire (anymore), the station is still in orbit (last she checked). Isabel Lovelace’s evening is going perfectly well and that’s what she, in her professional opinion, would call“highly goddamn suspicious”.





	sicken of the calm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frith_in_thorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/gifts).



> this is my secret santa gift for frith_in_thorns! my prompt was more or less “minkowski, hera, lovelace”, so i decided the ladies needed to catch a goddamn break
> 
> title is part of “they sicken of the calm who know the storm” from dorothy parker’s _sunset gun_

“Where's the fire?”

“No fire.”

“Oh. The bomb?”

“No bo̷m̸b.”

“Did—” Lovelace pauses, frowns. “Did someone get shot?”

Minkowski cracks an eye open an she floats past and arches an eyebrow. “Do you _want_ someone to get shot?”

“Well, I—no.” Minkowski continues to float. Hera’s camera continues to lazily follow her path across the room. The world does not _appear_ to be ending.

Hera’s camera flickers and turns to her. She sounds coy. “Oh?”

Lovelace flushes, ears warm. “Well, not right _now.”_ Unless—“Did Kepler do something? Say something?”

“He’s s̸a̵i̵d̵ plenty,” Hera bites out, sour. “He doesn’t actually need to b̵r̴eat̸h̶e, I don’t think, because he just keeps talking and t̸al̵k̵i̶n̴g and talking and—oh!” The camera ducks on its stand and refocuses in a couple quiet whirs. “No yeah, no, Kepler’s f̷in̴e̸. Unfortunately.”

“So you,” looking around, she can’t quite figure out _what’s_ going on, “you called me. Urgently. To come down here and—” Lovelace scowls and crosses her arms. Resists the urge tap her fingers in the way that once made Hui and Fourier trip over themselves. “And do whatever you’re doing. Which is, by the way, _what_ exactly?”

“Floating.” Minkowski turns, slight enough it curves her trajectory toward Lovelace. “You ever tried it?”

A song reprise in her head, then, about waves flooding over the banks and for a moment she sees the curve of the Hephaestus backlit in red—Lovelace blinks, steadies herself on the doorway. “Yeah.” Clears her throat, tries again. Doesn’t miss the way Minkowski and Hera share a look. “Once upon a time, but that’s,” Lovelace pulls herself into the room and shuts the door behind her. “That was a long time ago.”

“No better time than the p̵r̴es̴en̸t to give it a shot, right?” Both Minkowski and Lovelace grimace and the station groans around them. “Right, r̶i̷g̴h̸t, heard it when I said it, n̷o̷ time jokes.” Something rattles in the vents. “What I mean is, it’s not that h̷a̵r̴d.”

“But shouldn’t we be,” she grimaces, scrambling for something, “on high alert? For aliens? Goddard? Eiffel breaking something?”

_“No.”_ Her voice echoes but Minkowski stays cool, arms out by her sides as she brushes against the wall and pushes off. “Nothing’s on fire. No one’s in danger—well, in more danger than usual—the star has not turned beige or green or polka dot and we are _fine.”_

“When you put it like that, I guess you’re not _wrong.”_ Lovelace pretends not to see Minkowski stick her tongue out at her. To be fair there’s not really much to it, floating, just tipping back and the slow deliberate release of every single, solitary, wound-too-tight muscle in Isabel Sophia Lovelace’s miserable imposter body—she maybe struggles with it at first, reaching for the wall, a handrail, something to steady herself and ground her.

“For someone who’s spent like s̴i̵x̵ ye̸a̴r̵s̴ in space,” Hera comments, wry but not unkind, “you don’t do t̴o̷o great without gravity.”

“Stow it,” Lovelace grumbles, but it hasn’t got much bite behind it. It’s slow going, prying her hand off the rail finger by finger and she can feel Minkowski and Hera both inconspicuously not-watching her. Now that she’s conscious of it, that it’s _intentional,_ Lovelace thinks that floating in the absence of gravity is—well, it’s _weird._ She’s suddenly aware of every shift and twitch she makes, how her body moves to adapt for the lack of something that should be as natural to her as breathing. Lovelace flounders, off-kilter and headed for a wall when she turns her head to look at Minkowski across the room, and by the time she picks her way back to an actual handhold, ignores the way Hera snorts above her, and sets herself adrift again she thinks she hasn’t felt quite like this since she was in zero-g training.

Well.

Since Isabel Lovelace had been in zero-g training.

She lasts a staunch five minutes before she opens her eyes again. “How long are we supposed to—?” Lovelace turns abruptly and catches herself on a handrail as it meets her trajectory. Holding herself steady for a second before she lets go again, she feels that jolt even all these years later every time she expects gravity and finds it wanting. “What exactly _are_ we doing here?”

“We’re just—” Minkowski stops, lets the word hang between them. Out of words, she waves her hand absently. “Y’know, just.”

Lovelace cocks her head to the side, curious. “Just?”

“Just.” Hera confirms.

Isabel nudges off the wall as she approaches it; the push brings her even with Minkowski, eyes closed and hair loose and face for once totally and utterly calm. Hera’s camera swivels to meet her when she glances up; it’s a good look on their commander. “Yeah. Okay. I think that’d be nice, to just—”

She lets the words drop, fade away like a song with lyrics half-remembered.

Lovelace closes her eyes, and she floats.

**Author's Note:**

> had some issues getting this to upload on tumblr for some reason, so fingers crossed it'll stick this time!


End file.
